Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and legislative leaders reached a budget deal Thursday that will cut the state's personal income tax rate by 5 percent over the next four years while giving small increases to school funding.
The tax-cut plan would reduce the state's current 3.4 percent tax rate to 3.3 percent in 2015 and then reduce that to 3.23 percent in 2017.
Pence called it a "great victory." Don't know if I'd go that far, but since he wanted 10 percent, and the initial offers he got in return were 3 percent from the Senate and zilch from the House, I suppose he's entitled to be feeling pretty good about the deal.
And it's also a rare example of actual good coming from a compromise. Usually the deal is reached by people who want to increase spending a certain amount, and the compromise ends up being that they will increase it by a little less. The only thing the taxpayer gets is screwed a little more gently. This compromise actually involved us getting something.
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We need teachers and infrastructure repaires more then we need a reduction in income tax rates. If the Republicans wanted to give tax reduction to Hoosiers, however, it should have been in the form of sales tax reduction which would have made the tax system less regressive and a little more equitable.